TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CHILDREN IN UKRAINE

Section 5Analysis of the effectiveness of existing safeguards against tortureSection 5Analysis of the effectiveness of existing safeguardsagainst torture and brutal treatment of childrenIn general, the treatment of minor delinquents by the criminal actionagencies is not different from that of adult criminals.As far as the criminal militia departments are MIA’s operational units, respectively,among its obligatory performance indexes of its activities thereare “gross” figures of crime control, in particular, the number of detected(registered) number of solved crimes and cleared offenses. Of course, thisdefines the direction of the activities of personnel of these units. As indicatorsof the efficiency of the system they go on using “gross” indicators of“crime control”, in this case, control of minor delinquents. In addition, theprospect of losing preferential conditions of service for employees of theunits of criminal militia for minors (the record of service counting 18 mosper every 12 mos of service) in the event of the transfer of units from thecriminal militia to the militia of public safety entangles natural resistanceto such reorganization of criminal militia for minors. As long as the units ofthe Ministry of Internal Affairs, which deal with cases of children, will remainoperational units, their operational-search activities will remain a major partof their activities. Therefore, all allegations of shift in activities of relevantagencies for minors’ delinquency control from clearing crimes committedby children and punishment to their prevention, education of juvenile offendersand children and young people in general will remain only on paper.Under these conditions, any changes proposed in the criminal militia, in fact,will consist only in “changing signs”: the units of criminal militia for minorswill be entitled “The competent departments of the agencies of internal affairsfor the prevention of delinquency among children”, and the remandhouse will become a “temporary detention center for children.” If the statedeclares the shift to prevention of offenses consisting primarily of educa-169